Costa!

As my brother always says, "you are not allowed to like a film like this". But who says life has to be taking so damned seriously? This was 95 minutes of pure entertainment. Okay, lots of teenagers just loved it, but I sat next to a guy who only came in to the theater to watch the trailer to "Lord of the Rings", and even this guy couldn´t help liking this film. He just kept that grin on his face all through the movie. No wonder this film is breaking records in the Netherlands, where it already secured itself of a spot on the TOP 10 list of Dutch films of the last 20 years. (It even beat HANNIBAL in its second week of release.)

Enjoy the dancing and the fun Ugly Duck Becomes Beautiful Swan story. Enjoy Verbaan´s clumsiness, enjoy La Schuurman´s beautiful body displayed on a giant screen, enjoy the jokes and, if you have ever been with a bunch of young people on holiday, enjoy all those instantly recognizable moments. I did.

Why are all people who are not a teenager so negative about this movie? This is a funny, soapy romantic comedy which is just fun to watch. I really liked this better than the stupid 'Volle Maan', which was way to serious. Georgina Verbaan plays Janet, a girl who is insecure and a bit dumb, but with a good heart. She goes with her sister and two of her sister's friends on a holiday to Spain. There she meets Rens, a runner from a local dance-club, the Costa!. He asks her if she could dance with them, because there's soon an important MTV-dance-contest which they have to win because of the free publicity. Okey, the acting is not brilliant and the storyline is not too deep, but what's the big deal? It's a movie with all the ingredients of a successful summer movie. You see Costa! at moments you don't want to think about anything, you just want to have a nice time. And Costa! really succeeds in that.

I've seen this film a few weeks ago, just because else we had to wait 2 hours before The Exorcist -Director's Cut- was about to begin. So we went to Costa for 90 minutes. I have to say, it was a really feeling great movie. Ok, nothing happens, nothing looks like REAL, but hey, it feels like you're on vacation yourself. Not a spectacular movie, but fine to me, and by the way, i liked it more than the Exorcist after.

Costa! 7/10

This might very well be the worst movie I've seen in my life. Normally I don't watch movies like this, however I was forced to watch this at school. What a torment!

The story is as average and boring as it can be: Boy meets girl at the Spanish coast, boy and girl fall in love, but the love between the two seems impossible and everyone and everything is against their love. At the end of the movie the film becomes some kind of weird kung-fu movie were the guys in white fight the guys in black. Awful!

The action is so bad that it makes you laugh. The dances in the film that I think are supposed to be cool are so simple and laughable that even I can do them! And Georgina Verbaan is possibly the most irritating person i've ever seen on screen.

Johan Nijenhuis is on his way of becoming the Dutch Ed Wood. His movies are so bad that they make you laugh.

Victor Löw however gives a surprising good performance and Daan Schuurmans also acts OK.

So please for your own sake don't watch this movie. However if you like watching soaps this might be very well worth your time.

Yuk!

2/10

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It is a typical Dutch habit to dislike anything that comes from Holland. I guess we are too much of a Calvinist country to be able to enjoy anything that we made ourselves. That is why we chased away people like Paul Verhoeven who's films were completely slaughtered by the Dutch critics.

Johan Nijenhuis' film Costa! is a very entertaining and masterly constructed film that is aimed to please. In a genre (romantic comedy) that was not made before in Holland, combined with all the local Dutch stars you can think of and an American-like marketing campaign it is one of the best Dutch films I have seen in years and can be compared with the likes of Coyote Ugly and She's All That. It's result on the Dutch audience equals that of films like Saturday Night Fever and Dirty Dancing.

Hopefully the Dutch film industry is finally growing up.